Edubuntu is a partner project of Ubuntu, a distribution suitable for classroom use. The aim is that an educator with limited technical knowledge and skill will be able to set up a computer lab, or establish an on-line learning environment, in an hour or less, and then administer that environment without having to become a fully-fledged Linux geek.

The sixth beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for download and testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA6. This is the sixth BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. Fixes and Enhancements made since BETA5: many USB device updates; fix a panic when unloading the if_tap module; fix a lock order reversal in the network ioctl code; fix a panic with PF; fix large UID and GID handling in libarchive; the PFIL_HOOKS kernel option is now silently enabled by default; various locking fixes to the network stack; the net.inet.ip.check_interface sysctl is off by default now...." Read the rest of the release announcement. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA6-i386-disc1.iso (644MB) and 5.3-BETA6-i386-disc2.iso (603MB).

FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system for the i386, amd64, IA-64, arm, MIPS, powerpc, ppc64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's "4.4BSD-Lite" release, with some "4.4BSD-Lite2" enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's "Net/2" to the i386, known as "386BSD", though very little of the 386BSD code remains. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. FreeBSD comes with over 20,000 packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled for easy installation), covering a wide range of areas: from server software, databases and web servers, to desktop software, games, web browsers and business software - all free and easy to install.

Less than a week after the first release candidate (RC) was made available, the second RC build of FreeBSD 10.4 is now also ready for testing. Some of the recent noteworthy changes include: "Given that the amd64 disc1 image was overflowing, more of the base components installed into the disc1 (live) file systems had to be disabled. Most notably, this removed the compiler toolchain from the disc1 images. All disabled tools are still available with the dvd1 images, though. The aesni(4) driver now no longer shares a single FPU context across multiple sessions in multiple threads, addressing problems seen when employing aesni(4) for ipsec(4). Support for netmap(4) by the ixgbe(4) driver has been brought into line with the netmap(4) API present in stable/10. Also, ixgbe(4) now correctly handles VFs in its netmap(4) support again instead of treating these as PFs. During the creation of amd64 and i386 VM images, etcupdate(8) and mergemaster(8) databases now are bootstrapped, akin to what happens along the extraction of base.txz as part of a new installation via bsdinstall(8)." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details. Download: FreeBSD-10.4-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,900MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-10.4-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,680MB, SHA512).

Marius Strobl has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 10.4, an upcoming new stable release in the project's legacy 10.x branch: "The first RC build of the 10.4-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Noteworthy changes since 10.4-BETA4: an upstream fix for zlib compression has been merged, the bug had caused the embedded Tomcat web server of UniFi Controllers to send out incorrectly compressed responses; the Linux statfs ftype is now aware of ZFS; abug in bsdinstall(8) causing ifconfig_$INTERFACE lines to be added to /etc/rc.conf for unsuccessful DHCP attempts has been addressed; the usermod command of the pw(8) utility now correctly handles empty secondary group lists and its useradd command will no longer add entries with invalid user names, e. g. ones containing spaces; the zfs(8) error message displayed when rejecting a checksum selection now no longer suggests unsupported hash algorithms itself." See the full release announcement for further information. Here are the download links for the amd64 and i386 architectures: FreeBSD-10.4-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,901MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-10.4-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,683MB, SHA512).

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has announced the availability of FreeBSD 11.1. The 11.1 release is the latest stable version of the venerable FreeBSD operating system. The new version features updates to the project's compiler and linking tools, ZFS now supports compressed cache and the efivar utility has been added for managing UEFI variables. "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/11 branch. Some of the highlights: Clang, LLVM, LLD, LLDB, and libc++ have been updated to version 4.0.0. Many third-party (contributed) software updates, such as the Elf Tool Chain, ACPICA, libarchive(3), ntpd(8), unbound(8), and more. Support for blacklistd(8) has been added to OpenSSH. The zfsbootcfg(8) utility has been added, providing one-time boot.config(5)-style options for zfsboot(8). The efivar(8) utility has been added, providing an interface to manage UEFI variables. Support for Microsoft Hyper-V Generation 2 virtual machines has been added. The ena(4) driver has been added, providing support for "next generation" Enhanced Networking on the Amazon EC2 platform. The NFS client now supports the Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). The EFI loader can now access remote files via TFTP in addition to NFS as a run-time configuration option. ZFS now stores compressed data in cache, improving cache hit rates and performance." Details can be found in the project's release announcement and release notes. Download (pkglist): FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,193MB, SHA512, signature), FreeBSD-11.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,867MB, SHA512, signature).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of a new development snapshot for the FreeBSD operating system. The new snapshot, FreeBSD 11.1-RC3, will likely be the project's final release candidate before 11.1 is published. The snapshot features mostly small adjustments and fixes: "A summary of changes since 11.1-RC2 includes: A rare truncation case has been fixed in the runtime linker. Signatures of several pthread stubs have been corrected. Deprecation notices have been added to gdb, kgdb, sicontrol, wlconfig, as well as several drivers that have been removed from 12.0. Loop termination in vm_map_find_min() has been fixed. The layout of the vm_map_entry struct has been restored. The Heimdal KDC-REP service encrypted ticket usage has been fixed. An issue where some Intel SDHCI/eMMC controllers can fail on the first attempt after a D3 to D0 transition has been fixed. Capsicum support has been added to bhyve." Additional information can be found in the release announcement and in the project's release notes. Download: FreeBSD-11.1-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,194MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-11.1-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (2,867MB, SHA512).

As the FreeBSD team prepares fr the release f FreeBSD 11.1, the developers have been hard at work fixing lingering bugs. The FreeBSD team has announced a new release candidate, 11.1-RC2, for testing. The new development snapshot includes a number of bug fixes since the previous release candidate: "A summary of changes since 11.1-RC1 includes: VM subsystem fixes. A double-free in RPC code has been corrected, as well as a sanity check ensuring the return value of seteuid() is evaluated. A gpart issue with systems with SD cards as the primary drive has been corrected. A fix to correct IPv6 header parsing. A fix to correct REPORT ZONE commands sent to the da driver. A possible panic in camperiphfree() has been fixed. A potential panic on boot triggered by ACPI taskqueue creation has been fixed. Bug fixes in C++ symbol demangling. The ena driver has been added. MAP_GUARD has been added for stack grow area protection." Further details and a list of supported hardware architectures can be found in Glen Barber's release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-11.1-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,193MB, SHA512, FreeBSD-11.1-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,868MB, SHA512).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first release candidate snapshot of the FreeBSD operating system. The new development snapshot, FreeBSD 11.1-RC1, is available for x86, ARM, PowerPC and Sparc64 architectures. A number of bug fixes have been introduced into the release candidate: "The first RC build of the 11.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available. A summary of changes since BETA3 includes: several build toolchain related fixes; a use-after-free in RPC client code has been corrected; the ntpd leap-seconds file has been updated; various VM subsystem fixes; the '_' character is now allowed in newfs labels; a potential sleep while holding a mutex has been corrected in the sa driver; a memory leak in an ioctl handler has been fixed in the ses driver. A list of changes since 11.0-RELEASE are available in the releng/11.1 release notes." Further information, upgrade instructions and information on using the project's ARM images in headless environments can be found in the release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-11.1-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,193MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-11.1-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,869MB, SHA512).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of a new beta snapshot of the FreeBSD operating system. The new development version, FreeBSD 11.1-BETA3, is available for x86, ARM, PowerPC and Sparc64 architectures. Several fixes and improvements have been introduced since the previous beta, including: "The mlx4en driver has been updated to use static device numbering instead of dynamic numbering. The patch(1) utility has been updated to fix an infinite loop when failing to read the specified input. The bsdinstall utility has been updated to use consistent EFI partition configuration across all supported platforms. A system panic when booting a single CPU system has been corrected. The vmxnet3 driver has been updated to fix a system crash when LRO (large receive offloading) was enabled. An issue where an ethernet adapter would not report 'no carrier' after
disconnecting the network cable has been corrected. The qlnxe driver firmware has been updated to version 8.30.0.0." Information on testing and providing feedback for this beta release can be found in Barber's release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-11.1-BETA3-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,193MB, SHA512).

Glen Barber has announced the release of a new development snapshot of FreeBSD. The new snapshot, FreeBSD 11.1-BETA2, is available for x86, AMD64, PowerPC and ARM architectures and includes several fixes and improvements since the previous beta release. "The pcib driver has been updated for Hyper-V virtual machines to use device serial numbers instead of the GUID for persistent devices. A possible null pointer reference has been corrected. A buffer length issue in RPC code has been corrected. SMBFS has been fixed with saved passwords longer than 18 characters. Various swap pager fixes. top has been updated to change the way the ZFS ARC compression ratio is calculated, and remove overhead statistics, already included in other counters. bsdinstall has been updated to make ZFS min_auto_ashift adjustment persistent, as well as support Auto ZFS mode for ARM64. Possible transmission breakage of files longer than 4GB on 32-bit architectures has been fixed." Additional information, including the default account names and passwords for embedded devices, can be found in the release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-11.1-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,191MB, SHA512).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the initial beta build of the upcoming FreeBSD 11.1. As usual, ISO images are available for the amd64, armv6, i386, aarch64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. The release announcement includes a special note for the users of the arm architecture: "Note regarding arm/armv6 images - for the convenience of those without console access to the system, a 'freebsd' user with a password of 'freebsd' is available by default for ssh(1) access. Additionally, the root user password is set to 'root'. It is strongly recommended to change the password for both users after gaining access to the system." The release notes are a work in progress at this stage and the announcement only links to the 11.0-STABLE notes: "A list of changes since 11.0-RELEASE are available on the stable/11 release notes. Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 11.1-RELEASE cycle progresses." For those readers interested in testing the new FreeBSD version, here are the download links for the amd64 and i386 installation DVDs: FreeBSD-11.1-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (3,190MB, SHA512), FreeBSD-11.1-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,869MB, SHA512). The final release of FreeBSD 11.1 is scheduled for 26 July 2017.